Summit Sips » egg white

Drink of the Week: Pink Lady

Randy — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 04:11:26 +0000

The name may not inspire you, but this drink actually surprised me. If you dig around in old cocktail books for this recipe you find that they are all different. Flipping through the pages of the Savoy, for example, you find a recipe that lacks the Applejack and has no citrus. It doesn’t sound like something I want to try. You can find versions that add brandy to the mix and even some with cream. One might specify lemon while another will call for lime. It seems that darn near anything that had a light pink hue was once called a Pink Lady—a name you could just pass by thinking it’s a girlie drink before you started comparing vintage recipes. Even Ted “Dr. Cocktail” Haigh goes to great lengths in his Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails to avoid revealing the name of this drink until you turn the page. But looking

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Drink Of The Week: Angostura

Randy — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 05:04:20 +0000

The Great Minnesota Get-together It’s that time of the year again when Minnesotans make their annual trip to the State Fair. It sounds so old fashioned, but if you live in the Twin Cities, you already know that folks around here take it very seriously. It’s not all pigs and agriculture, although they have that too. I tend to keep my distance from anything that smells like a barn, but it’s either that or the deep fat fryers. Everyone seems to enjoy something different at the Fair, and some of us just look forward to all of the food. Old habits die hard. For instance, every year, I make my way to Sweet Martha’s Cookies where I buy a bucket and walk it over to the “all the milk you can drink” stand. And every year, someone in the crowd says, “Whoa, what a great idea—chocolate chip cookies and

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Drink Of The Week: Sloe Gin Fizz

Randy — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 07:03:39 +0000

A Fizz—that sounds interesting, but sloe gin? Isn’t that the sickeningly sweet red stuff from from when you were young and didn’t know any better? Well, yes and no. And, that’s a problem we need to overcome if we are to restore this drink to its rightful place as a refreshing classic. To get there, we need to understand a few things about our base spirit. Sloe gin isn’t actually gin at all, or rather, it isn’t gin anymore.

It’s supposed to start as gin, but during an infusion of sloe berries (from the blackthorn bush, related to the plum), sugar is added and it slowly transforms into a liqueur. That seems straightforward enough. The problem is that American manufacturers have cheapened the process over the years to the point that most of what you find on shelves today isn’t even made with gin. Untold artificial flavors and too

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Drink Of The Week: Riviera, two ways

Randy — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 04:16:06 +0000

Sometimes I feature classics, sometimes a riff, and once in a while it’s an exotic Tiki. There’s not really a pattern to the Drinks Of The Week here at Summit Sips, but I do think it’s important to understand classic recipes and techniques. Over the past year or so, some of the recipes (including a few that don’t fall upon a Thursday) required a little more preparation to pull them together. Such cases usually involved preparing some homemade ingredient. That can mean making a better version of something you can find on shop shelves, or sometimes it’s an opportunity to create your own version of an ingredient that’s impossible to find anywhere. This week, I want to feature a recipe that relies upon a basic infusion for the base spirit. It’s the Riviera cocktail by Toby Maloney, a popular favorite from The Violet Hour.

I don’t see the Riviera

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Drink Of The Week: Campari Sour

Randy — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 04:40:56 +0000

If any drink exemplifies the flavors that Campari has to offer, it’s probably straight Campari, but besides that, our Drink Of The Week really shows off this wonderful bitter liqueur. It may be based on just a simple sour formula, but I am surprised how much I enjoy this drink. It’s not very strong either which makes it a nice option before dinner.

I hope to feature other bitter cocktails as the year goes on, but I figure this one makes a nice conclusion to the previous post about potable bitters. The fact that this drink is also sweet and sour makes it a bit more accessible for someone starting to explore bitter flavors. If you aren’t already a fan of Campari, this is a great way to discover what all the fuss is about.

Campari Sour 1.5 oz Campari .5 oz simple syrup (1:1) 1 oz lemon juice

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STEP to the Dot to the HEN

Randy — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 23:06:51 +0000

STEP.HEN, keepin' it real, Yo.

Imagine my delight to find out that my brother-in-law enjoys the exact same vodka martini that I do: Ketel One with a twist. It’s so simple that when I thought about posting something about it today for his birthday, I decided to take a more inspired approach—one with a few more “steps”.

Eleven months ago my wife and I visited the man of honor in San Francisco where there’s no shortage of great cocktails. During our visit, the better part of one evening was spent hanging out in the loft we rented, dancing and drinking Whiskey Sours. We also laughed about what our names might be if we were rap musicians.

Ok, so none of us is about to make it big in the music industry, but there’s no reason we can’t enjoy another cocktail dreaming about it, right? I decided to dedicate

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Make Rhubarb-Infused Vodka

Randy — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 02:44:10 +0000

Last year I infused some vodka with rhubarb and it turned out so good that it was gone too quickly. In fact, I believe this was the fastest we went through an infusion ever. I’ve done everything from chili peppers and pineapple to coffee and vanilla, but the rhubarb is my favorite. This year, I decided to try it again and I let it go a little longer to see how the flavor intensified. It turns out that the flavor of rhubarb develops very quickly and after only one day you can see a its gorgeous pink tint and smell the effects. This time I let it sit over the long holiday weekend, and I think I have another winner!

Infusing vodka is about the easiest mixology adventure you can take, and a great way to get started thinking about the flavors you can achieve in a cocktail. To

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Drink Of The Week: Pisco Sour

Randy — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 02:38:25 +0000

Here we are with another exciting Drink Of The Week. It is exciting, right? This time it’s the Pisco Sour. Is it Peruvian? Is it Chilean? Who knows. It’s probably both. Get yourself some pisco and some limes, not lemons. Did you know that in Peru, what we call limes they call lemons? It’s confusing, but trust me, you should be using limes.

So, what’s pisco? That’s what you really wanna know. Pisco is made from distilled grapes including Quebranta, Muscat and Italiao varieties to create a kind of clear brandy. Depending on it’s origin and the type of grapes used, it can have a woody and sweet aroma and a flavor reminiscent of weak rum. Pisco and the Pisco Sour are the subject of an ongoing dispute between Peru and Chile. Each country claims to own the origin of the spirit and the popular cocktail. While the argument

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Drink Of The Week: Pegu Club

Randy — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 05:23:03 +0000

Inspired by Doug’s Pegu Blog, this week’s Drink Of The Week is a classic that has gained some momentum in recent years. The Pegu Club Cocktail originated at the Pegu Club (naturally) in Myanmar (Burma). The club was built in the 1880′s as a Victorian-styled gentleman’s club to serve the British colonials of the day. Of course, the club itself is long gone, but we do have the cocktail which has inspired more folks than just Doug. In New York City, a different Pegu Club was recently established, paying tribute to this great drink with their name. The New York Pegu Club has also played an important role in the current cocktail revival.

I am going to say it right off the bat: It’s a gin cocktail. Now that we have it out in the open and before you run for the hills, think about this: How can a drink survive

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Drink Of The Week: Ramos Gin Fizz

Randy — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 14:52:03 +0000

Well, it’s Mardi Gras week, and although we just finished celebrating the Winter Carnival here in St. Paul, New Orleans is just getting started with their own annual festival. This year the new Superbowl champions have another reason to celebrate. But in addition to the parades and the street parties, New Orleans has always played an important role when it comes to cocktails.

When deciding the Drink Of The Week this week I knew it had to be something historically significant from New Orleans. My first inclination was to feature the Sazerac—often cited as one of the first cocktails ever created, if not the original cocktail. The history is debatable even though it was made the official drink of New Orleans. Important as it is, I am going to leave the Sazerac for another time and instead focus on the equally famous “morning after” remedy—the Ramos Gin Fizz.

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Drink Of The Week: Whiskey Sour

Randy — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:50:57 +0000

It might not sound like a very exciting drink this week, but chances are you have never had this drink properly prepared. A well-executed Whiskey Sour has the perfect balance of sweet and sour and highlights the wonderful flavors of good whiskey. It has a silky texture so it goes down easy and it’s topped with a wonderful meringue. If that’s not how you would describe a Whiskey Sour then you must be making it wrong.

The sour is an important cocktail classification. There are many examples. A typical sour cocktail consists of a base spirit, a souring agent and a sweetener. In this case, the base is bourbon, and the souring ingredient is lemon juice. Sugar (or simple syrup) is the sweetener. Did you think I was going to use a store-bought sweet and sour mix? You must know better than that by now!

Sour mix itself probably started

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